After emailing a restaurant in Split on a whim, I spent a month working voluntarily without pay under Toma, a chef whose youthful goals of serving the Catholic Church were thrown off course after a serious injury in his twenties.
During my time as a chef there, I hadn't considered what it meant to give my labor away for free in a country where the meaning of work had been broken and rebuilt within living memory.
I'm currently working on a piece that traces the parallel between Croatia's recent history, its relationship to workers' rights and capitalism, and Toma's unique path, all shaped by a rupture, a forced reinvention, and a process of healing that isn't quite finished.
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